Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

How I added a handful of hidden YouTube TV channels for the Olympics

Olympics channels on YouTube TV.
Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

We’re halfway through the Paris Olympics, and something just hadn’t felt right. NBC and Peacock have done pretty well with the Paris Games. You can watch pretty much everything live, or catch up later in the day in the U.S. But this is 2024, and it just seemed like I didn’t have any options — and options in high-res — as I might have expected, being a subscriber to YouTube TV.

Turns out, I was right. And it’s a good reminder of one of my larger complaints about the biggest live streaming service you can get. (That’s the pessimistic view. The optimistic view is that this is still a cool YouTube TV tip.)

See, one of YouTube TV’s strengths is that you can sort its channel listings pretty much however you want. There’s alphabetically, of course. Or you can opt for whatever channels you watch most. But I’m still a huge fan of being able to customize the order of the channels however I want.

There’s one problem with the custom sort, though — and it’s still a pretty major one, even after all these years. New channels will be added from time to time. But you won’t actually see them unless you go into the custom sort and enable them, because they’re hidden by default when they’re added.

Custom channel listing on YouTube TV.
New channels added to YouTube TV are hidden by default if you use the custom sort. Screenshot

That’s fine if they’re not channels you’ll actually care about. But it’s understandably frustrating if they’re channels you might actually want to watch. It’d been a while since I’d checked for new channels, and sure enough there were a number of options that had been added, but weren’t actually visible.

The remedy is easy, but it’s still something you can only do from a phone or tablet, or from a web browser. Just go into the channel listings, hit the button for the sorting options, then edit the custom sort and unhide any channels you want to see.

And then enjoy the second week of the Games.

Phil Nickinson
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
Sling TV channels: Can you watch CBS, TBS, Bally Sports, and more?
Sling TV on a TV.

Sling TV is not the most simple of streaming services. That’s by design. It’s built on two tracks — Sling Orange and Sling Blue. You can get one of the tracks for a paltry sum, or you can get both for just a little bit more. (Which is what Sling really encourages you to do.) There’s a little overlap between them, but neither has as many channels as you’ll get on its competitors.

To augment that, each track has its own slate of optional add-ons, which Sling TV calls Extras. They’ll cost you a few more dollars each month. While that can quickly take you into the same price range services like YouTube TV, Hulu With Live TV, and Fubo, it’s all about your ability to choose to have those add-ons — or not.

Read more
Sling TV versus YouTube TV
Sling TV guide on an iPhone.

The Sling TV guide as seen on an iPhone. Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

YouTube TV is the most popular live-streaming service in the U.S., with more than 8 million subscribers. Sling TV has about one-quarter of that. But it's still worth looking at the latter against the former because it does things a little differently.

Read more
How many devices can you watch Sling TV on at once?
Sling TV on an iPhone.

One of the coolest things about live-streaming video is that you’re almost never limited to just a single feed on a single device. But if you’re trying to figure out how many devices you can watch Sling TV on at once, the answer is “it depends.”

Sling TV is unlike its competitors in that it has a couple of base plans from which to choose — Sling Orange and Sling Blue. They have fewer channels (separately and combined) than you’d find on other options, but they also cost less. You then couple them with add-ons (called “Extras” in Sling world) to fill out your plan. And the number of devices on which you can simultaneously watch Sling TV depends on how you put your scheme together.

Read more